


V For Vulnerability

by SilverShortyyy



Series: V is the Roman Numeral Five [2]
Category: V for Vendetta (2005), V for Vendetta - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2019-01-29 20:31:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12638628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverShortyyy/pseuds/SilverShortyyy
Summary: “Remember, remember the 5th of November, the gunpowder treason and plot. I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot... We are told to remember the idea and not the man. Because a man can fail. He can be caught, he can be killed and forgotten... But you cannot kiss an idea, cannot touch it or hold it. Ideas do not bleed. They do not feel pain. They do not love. And it is not an idea that I miss. It is a man. A man that made me remember the 5th of November. A man that I will never forget.”





	1. V

**Author's Note:**

> Vulnerability  
> n: the quality or state of being capable of being physically or emotionally wounded

“V.”

He knows his sins and had never felt guilt for them. He used to slit throats and spill blood and push minds to the brink of insanity without a second thought. Yes, his humanity had long ago told him of what horrors he was doing, but it wasn’t enough to stop him. He had a cause, and his cause was definite. He would die for his cause, and he would most definitely slaughter for it.

 _‘I do believe_  
_In all the things you say.  
What comes is better than what came before.’_

And then she came into his life. Walked out of the shadows at night. Walked out of the shadows and thought about living with demons, thought about soiling herself for the sake of whatever life she had left to live. But the demons were cruel, and they tried to soil her.

“I’m leaving.”

_No, you aren’t!_

He would have called himself a demon once. But demons don’t rescue angels from other demons. Demons don’t save angels from death. Demons don’t give refuge for angels trapped in hell, or let them do as they please with ensured protection.

_‘And you'd better come, come to me  
Better come, come to me’_

But that was a long time ago, before he met her. Before he set his eyes on blonde curls and soft brown eyes. Before he swooped in with his cloak fluttering in his wake, getting rid of the demons and taking her away. Before, when he still had not spent hours in her company whether in the same room as her or simply in the same Gallery, before when he had yet to give a rose that promised not death, but life.

_You can’t._

He sighs.

“There are 872 songs in here. I’ve listened to them all, but I’ve never… Danced to any of them.”

_I know._

He would give anything for them to have met in another life. In a different life. In a better life where the world isn’t doomed to end itself with fascism and genocide. But, he thinks, maybe he’d never meet her if that was the case. Maybe, even if he did, they would never love. And even if he would still fall in love with her, she would never spend enough time with him to so much as give him false hope.

_‘Better run, run to me  
Better come’_

The irony in such a thing though: if in another life, he worries about not being given false hope, then what had he been giving to her? Though she will never know it, because she doesn’t love him. She can’t love him. Especially not now, not after what he’s done to her.

For the first time in his monstrous life, he feels the weight of at least one of his sins.

_I know, Evey. I know you have to leave._

“Did you hear me?”

He sighs. He wishes he was deaf and did not hear her. He wishes he was blind and never had to see her. He wishes he was dead and never had an opportunity to meet her. But he is capable of hearing and seeing and living, even if in this moment he wishes otherwise.

How did she become so valuable to him?

 _‘I do believe_  
_In all the things you say.  
What comes is better than what came before.’_

 _When_ did she begin meaning so much to him?

He doesn’t want to speak. Doesn’t want to watch everything end. Doesn’t want to help build up to the fall of the story, to the end of the happy moments and scenes filled with smiles. Genuine smiles. Not a smile frozen on a mask.

But there is no way out.

“Yes.”

He looks at her, and he wishes his heart didn’t shatter at the mere thought of her absence, that his chest didn’t cave in at the mere possibility of her gone. He wishes that his soul wasn’t so tattered at the prospect of reality, wishes that his body did not want to collapse and fall apart and make his voice beg her to stay. He wishes that he did not need to will himself to let her go, because this was bound to happen from the moment he captured her and brought her to his homemade interrogation cell.

_‘And you'd better run, run to me  
Better run, run to me’_

He looks at her, and he’s glad for the mask that keeps her from seeing the tears threatening to spill onto his cheeks. Still, he can’t look at her for too long. So he simply glances at her from over his shoulder, because it’s too painful, too heart-wrenching to see her knowing where he will be left without her.

“I can’t stay here.”

He turns around, and he meets her steady gaze that seems to look right through him. And, he knows in that moment, she couldn’t possibly love him. She couldn’t possibly care for him, not after what he did, couldn’t possible forgive him for doing that to her.

_‘Better come, come to me’_

He’s thankful for the mask. Had she seen his eyes, she would see pitiful eyes, eyes begging for her to stay, to pull him into her arms and keep him together. Because he didn’t know how this works; he didn’t understand how men and women could keep going when their hearts are shattered to a thousand microscopic pieces.

“I know. Well, you won’t find anymore locked doors here.”

She could scavenge the Gallery and she’d see it all.

_‘You'd better run’_

She could scavenge his heart and he’d give it all.

“I thought about keeping this but, didn’t seem right knowing you wrote it.”

She held out to him Valerie’s letter, the rolled-up tissue paper small in her hand.

“I didn’t.” He sees her look of surprise, though he chooses to look beyond it. She’s gotten better at hiding her emotions. He’d rather keep thinking about what he wishes he didn’t feel than what his mind might try to do to further degrade her. He didn’t want to be a psychopath. Not anymore. “May I show you something before you go?”

They walk the shadows and halls of the Gallery. Down stairs and through doorways.

And, into a room of roses and posters.

“She was real.” There is wonder in Evey’s voice again.

“Yes.”

“She’s beautiful.” But he now knows the woman beside him is even more beautiful.

“Mm.”

“Did you know her?”

“No. She wrote the letter just before she died, and I delivered it to you as it had been delivered to me.” No more secrets. No more poetry. No more verbose deception.

“Then it really happened, didn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“You were in the cell next to her. And that’s what this is all about. You’re getting back at them for what they did to her, and to you.”

“What was done to me created me. That’s the basic principle of the universe, that every action creates an equal and opposing reaction.” And that’s how he’s tricked himself to think about it for a while now. For the past twenty years. Rage would do him no good; he needs to be calm and calculating for his plans to have worked.

“Is that how you see it? Like an equation—?”

“What was done to me was monstrous.” But with Evey, no deception is necessary.

“And they created a monster.”

He opens his mouth to speak, but no sound comes out. She’s right, and he cannot argue with that. Despite the truth in his statement, he feels the chink in his armor get prodded on, the chink that only she has access to, and he feels a pang in his chest wondering how she could pierce him when he trusts her to keep him safe.

_She can’t leave._

_She has to stay._

He’s a beast and a man and an idea. The idea is the him that flits around London vanquishing the ever disgusting members of a government that sees it fit to throttle the freedom of its own people. The man is the him of eloquence and chivalry; the gentleman with such poetic ability that might be able to put Shakespeare to shame. The beast, though, is the him that he is driven to when he knows not what to do.

_She can’t leave._

_She has to stay._

_I don’t want her to go— She knows my weakness— She is my weakness—_

_She has to stay._

_I want her to stay._

_Evey, I want you to stay._

“Do you know where you’ll go?” The beast growls at her, and the gentleman inside of him regrets the words as they leave. She will hate him for this, despise him for once again backing her into a corner and giving her no other choice than to stay. Ironic, he thinks; he fights against a government keeping the people from freedom and here he is trying to restrict the freedom of—

Evey.

“No. That would’ve scared me before but, I suppose I should thank you.”

“Oh.” And there he knows he did a thorough job on her. Part of him wishes he never did push through with his plans—a part of him wishes it because it would make her easier to manipulate to his desires, a part of him wishes it because she didn’t deserve what he put her through—but another part of him knew it was necessary. And in such a cruel world, he thinks he helped her indeed; tough love they would call it.

Love.

Evey suddenly strides the inches left between them, stepping into his personal space. Her face is just inches away from his, and he stays stock still, looking down at her face while hoping she did not hear his heartbeat growing heavier and faster by the second.

She inches closer, her eyes fixed on where his lips should be, but where the mask’s lips are painted.

He can feel her breath on the mask, her heat permeating through the plastic and into his agape mouth.

He would have inhaled sharply, but he tenses himself enough to draw in a long, slow breath—

“Thank you. Goodbye.”

_No!_

“Evey.” V doesn’t miss a beat, his hand nearly grasping Evey’s wrist. But that’s too much, and he lets his knuckles wrap around thin air before pulling it back to his sides. “May I ask you for something?” She stops, and turns around to face him. She stays for another moment, and he would keep that moment frozen if time would permit him to. But the seconds tick, and life moves on. “If I had one wish, I would wish to see you again, if only once before the fifth.”

“Alright.” And there is that finality in her voice, a finality that he sees in her eyes that he knows would love him no more than he loves London.

“Thank you.” She leaves then, and he watches her, watches her walk away, step after step farther and farther away from him. He tries to keep his breathing level, tries to keep his shoulders from hunching over too much, tries to keep his sight from blurring over. He tries to walk in a straight line, following after her a foot away, seeing her out and seeing her possibly one last time.

She won’t come back. He knows it.

People make promises but they break it all the time.

The lock clicks and he listens to her footfalls going up, up on the stairs and up onto the ground, and the Gallery suddenly feels so cold and ghastly, haunted by her presence and the sheer memory of her. He could look to his right and paint a memory of her there, or look to his left and see a scene he had memorized with her in the center.

With every step, he feels reality crashing back on him. There’s the vendetta and the fifth and Norsefire, and the sirens and the Fingermen and the Nose. There is Evey and Evey and _Evey_ for every reason, and there is him.

For twenty years, he was a towering figure in the shadows, one with the shadows, a shadow himself.

Now he feels so separate from everything. As if all his ties were severed at Evey’s absence, and suddenly he remembers all the loose ends and all the reasons he did not include personal relationships into the equation. He is an idea, merely the bearer of the future where fascism didn’t rear its ugly head at a people, and he is bulletproof, he—

V stares at himself at his mirror, the mirror she had cleaned, long, long ago.

He raises his hands and tries to keep them from shaking, but it’s impossible. He lowers the mask, slowly, slowly, slowly—

Glass shatters and he likes the sound of it.

It keeps him from hearing the shatter in his own chest.

When he cries, he tells himself he cries because he does not know what to do, does not know how to handle what he had let this woman do to him. He cries because he did not want this to happen; it was supposed to be smooth sailing from the moment he made his first grand entrance.

But he cries, and he finally decides not to deny that of all the reasons he’s crying, he’s crying for another reason altogether. The most dynamic reason of all, the trigger, the switch that broke him.

He cries because of her, because he had fallen in love with Evey Hammond and he hurt her, hurt he enough to make her leave him, hurt her so much that he knows he deserves to be broken as much as she had broken him. He cries, because he loves her and now she is gone, and the past twenty years was just a mask of ‘it’s okay’ and the moment she touched him, he knew he would actually be better then when she was around.

He cries because he loves her and he doesn’t know what else to feel now that she’s gone.


	2. Evey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I used a bit from the graphic novel that I just found too perfect to leave out. So here it is!

She heard everything and nothing after that. After she kissed him. After she felt his warmth on her lips behind the mask. After she felt his breathing slip into her mouth from the slit in the mask.

She heard every loud footstep he took walking away, his footfalls echoing in the arched way leading him away from her. She heard every swish of his cloak, heard every skid of his boot on both concrete and metal tracks. She heard his silent breathing, softer and softer until it was no more than a pin drop onto a cushion.

But she couldn’t hear the curfew above head. She couldn’t hear the creak of the metal gates at the end of the tunnel. She couldn’t hear the people entering and shoving a body around, guns and boots resounding against the concrete of the underground. She couldn’t hear even the silence in the dim tunnel, not even the silence in the Gallery a few halls away from her.

She could only hear him, and her breathing, and the loud way her heart had beat after he abruptly pulled away from her. She could only hear the deep inhale he took before turning away, and the distinct crack in her chest after he was swallowed up by the darkness.

When he was gone, she replayed it over and over again in her head. Was there anything she could do? No, she knows that. She would do anything to change it, but his mind was made up and even she couldn’t do anything about it. And since when did she have a right to him? She’s felt that way for a while now, but did he feel the same?

But she felt his pulse where her pinky had slid beneath the fabric. And it was fast, and shallow and—

And then it beat in time with hers, calm as if decided; her lips touched the mask’s and maybe, just maybe, it was enough to be a real kiss.

She could feel it in his heat, in the warmth that radiated off of him and the smallest twitches in his muscles. She had felt it in his presence and the way he seemed to draw in to her, and then—

And then he yanked himself away.

She heard nothing after he went off.

Until now, when she hears footfalls she knows too well to mistaken for any other’s. Except it is stuttering, not the calm and confident pace that she knows him to have.

She looks to the shadows that had eaten him up and prays it’s him, that it isn’t a ghost or Sutler or Creedy or—

“V!” And there he is, the _bastard_ , limping toward her with his breath sounding as if every exhale pained him. With the state of his clothes, she didn’t doubt that to be the case. He looks to be a second from fainting, and god forbid he rendered unconscious. He inches closer and closer to her, and she rushes to him just a second before he collapses. “Oh, we have to stop your bleeding.”

“Please, don’t.” _Is he an idiot?!_ But deep inside her she knows the answer. Though she doesn’t deny it, she refuses to accept that it is really happening. What are thoughts but theories of the extremes of reality, right? “I’m finished. And glad of it.”

 _He really is an idiot._ “Don’t say that.” She can’t breathe, can’t grasp this to be real. She holds down onto his shirt where everywhere seems to be tattered, and soaked, and getting thoroughly soiled though she doesn’t want to think _why_ and _where_ because no, no, no—

“I told you, only truth.” She marvels at how he can silence her thoughts so well, how he can call for the ruckus to end like a conductor to an orchestra. He feels so calm, so collected in her arms. He doesn’t even seem to fear death.

His white mask is peppered with dirt and grime from whatever confrontation he had prepared himself for, and his hat no longer could find purchase on top of his wig. His cloak is torn and ripped at the edges, soiled and soaked in most other places. He had looked better, and Evey bets he never looked worse. At least, with his entire regalia on.

“For twenty years, I sought only this day, and nothing else existed.” _Don’t say it._ But there is a finality to his words, and she couldn’t take this away from him. She wants to deny it, to lie to herself and lie to the world and pretend he isn’t bleeding heavily in her arms. But she holds his promise to herself and gifts this to them both; she can lie to herself for the next months, heck, even the succeeding years, but she’ll believe in reality for now. For him. “Until I saw you.”

 _The bastard knows what to say even when he’s seconds from death._ But no he isn’t dying— He is.

“Then everything changed.” She remembers waking up with yard-tall stacks of book upon book, and hearing the Wurlitzer playing in the main gallery. She remembers raging at him for keeping her there, then storming into her room to lock herself in. She remembers his eggs on toast that he stole from Sutler’s supplies, and being woken up by loud clanging only to end up watching The Count of Monte Cristo beside him. She remembers meeting him and thinking he was insane; watching him blow up the Old Bailey; finding out he was a murderer and not only a poetic anarchist who saved her from the Fingermen. “I fell in love with you, Evey.” She remembers the first time he let her lie her head down on his lap, remembers reading a book against his stomach with his knee keeping her back from rolling off the couch. She remembers drinking tea with him at whatever time it is underground, and watching him every time he walked through the main gallery until she could tell his mood with only the slightest of changes. “Like I no longer believed I could.” She remembers the torture, and imagines his to have been much worse. She imagines having only yourself to live for, besides a personal vendetta against a monster of a government. She imagines forgetting about personal relationships, forgetting about humanity.

She thinks, if she had not come sooner, he would have lost his humanity completely.

She feels every flex of his muscles on her thighs, hears the rasp and difficulty in his breath. She feels the pained inhales beneath her fingers, and the way his blood becomes a little warmer and his body a little colder as the moment draws on. She wishes she could grab some bandages and stick it in his wounds; she wishes she could transfer some of the wounds to herself. Anything, anything to keep him from this pain, anything to keep him alive.

Anything.

“I don’t want you to die.” She feels the sob, but she doesn’t let it loose. There is hope yet. He’s still breathing, is he not?

“That’s the most beautiful thing…” _No_. “You could have ever given me.” _No_. _NO!_

“Good luck, sweet Eve. I love you.” One last shuddering breath. “Ave... Atque... Vale...”

His head lolls back, no longer held up to look at her. The mask looks at the wall beside them, and while she had known his mask to be a bright, vibrant white, this mask is dull and dirtied. There is no more verbose poetry, no more Shakespeare quotations; no more of the deep, rumbling voice that she finds calms even the darkest of her thoughts. No more. Not even of his touches, ever calculating and hesitant and she remembers wondering how he can kill, how he can make bombs, how he can make all these plans and yet be sure how exactly to hold her.

No more.

Because the mask is only a mask now. And he’s gone.

“V?” Even the illusion of his breath no longer exists. Evey hears nothing more than the echo of her desperate plea through the tunnels. “V?!”

But he says nothing, no witty quip, no comforting words. And she feels his blood on her fingers, feels his blood on her legs. Suddenly, she’s alone, and the world is big and scary and there’s no one to tower over her and protect her from the shadows.

He was a shadow, too. But she loved him— _loves_ him—and he was more light than light could ever be.

* * *

She watches his fireworks that go on well after Finch leaves her alone on the balcony. She sits here, and she feels V‘s ghost watching her from the doorway, the rain pouring in the back of her eyelids and the lightning striking when she holds her hands up.

_Ave atque vale, V. I looked it up._

She looks at his fireworks and remembers how bright they looked the first time he had shown it to her, back when they first met. He had blown up the Old Bailey then, blown her up with fireworks but not quite as extravagant as this.

She watches the night, and she feels like it should be hotter and warmer and much more humid, but she feels nothing but frigid cold biting at her skin even when she’s wearing her clothes and wrapped in his cloak and holding his mask in her palm.

She stares at the frozen mask that smiles back at her, one of his clean ones, and she wonders if she’ll ever feel warm again.

Because even her heart feels cold. And her veins feel hollow. And even if her heart beats on, it doesn’t feel right now that he’s gone.

_‘Hail and farewell.’_

She takes and deep breath, and soon, she’s where he used to sleep, and she curls up in a ball feeling his phantom warmth all around her, though his warmth is gone now and he isn’t coming back.

She’s supposed to hear footsteps behind the door and the lock should click, and there should be a swish of cloak before a closed door. She’s supposed to hear his smooth baritone asking her what was wrong and there should be a dip at the side of the bed and his hand should rest on her shaking shoulder. Then he’s supposed to stroke her arm until she calms and when she opens her eyes he’s supposed to be there.

But she opens her eyes and he isn’t.

So she shuts them again and tries to dream, but even in her dreams, he’s gone.

**Author's Note:**

> V for Vendetta, V, Evey, and I Found A Reason by Cat Power are all not mine. I love them all though.


End file.
